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A petition filed Tuesday to stay the execution of Humberto Leal Jr., a Mexican national convicted here for the rape and murder of a San Antonio teenager, cites the international implications of the case and was accompanied by letters of support from high-ranking U.S. government leaders, including judges and retired military leaders.

The request for a reprieve or commutation of Leal's scheduled July 7 execution was the latest round in a legal battle stemming from a 2004 ruling at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that said neither Leal nor 50 other Mexican citizens on death row nationwide had been told they could contact Mexican consulate representatives when they were arrested.

The remedy for that breach of their rights, the world court determined, was to grant new hearings to the condemned to determine if consular access would have affected the outcome of their capital murder trials.

“It's not just about one person,” said Sandra Babcock, his attorney. “If (Leal's) execution goes forward the effects are going to reverberate far beyond the borders of Texas and far beyond the United States.”

Babcock, a law professor at Northwestern University, said U.S. citizens need the same right when traveling abroad. If U.S. authorities don't abide by the treaty that established it, those Americans — including members of the military, tourists, missionaries and business people — will be at risk, say support letters sent with the petition.

That problem has attracted bipartisan attention at the highest levels of government. Then-President George W. Bush, an ardent supporter of the death penalty, in 2005 tried to force states to hold hearings on consular access in each case.

Texas fought the order, and the case of Jose Medellin, one of the Mexican citizens listed in the world court ruling, went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in March 2008 that Bush overstepped his executive powers — only Congress could enact a law to force states to adhere to the international court's ruling.

Five months later, Medellin was executed for the rape and murder of two Houston girls.

Leal, 38, from Monterrey, Mexico, was convicted for the 1994 rape and bludgeoning death of Adria Sauceda, 16, whose naked body was found on a dirt road about 100 yards from a party she and Leal attended. Her head was bashed in with a rock and she had been sexually assaulted with a stick.

Leal told authorities Adria had accidentally hit her head on the rock as the two struggled while he tried to take her home.

He has lost previous appeals citing incompetent attorneys. Babcock said his attorneys failed to counter forensic claims and didn't offer mitigating evidence that included an abusive background.

Her petition includes an allegation never mentioned in earlier appeals, that he was raped as a boy by Father Federico Fernandez at St. Clare Catholic Church in San Antonio. Fernandez was indicted in 1988 in the abuse of two boys, but the case was dismissed and a lawsuit was settled out of court.

Leal had never disclosed the abuse to anyone, Babcock said. Pat Rodgers, spokesman for the Archdiocese of San Antonio, said the allegation would be investigated.

A Perry spokesman said the governor then “will consider all matters about the case and make a decision.”

Babcock said a bill to address the need for hearings could be filed in Congress as early as next week and that executing Leal while such legislation is pending would be “unnecessary and a very damaging breach of our international legal obligations.”